Return to Music Box Mountain: Part 2

The upstairs is where shit really gets crunk. Taxidermied birds singing in a cage? Random, out-of-place collection of baseball caps? Humongous Hummels and remote-controlled bathtubs?

All upstairs, baby.

Corey, up to his eyeballs in Bavarian sights.

Kristy, procuring decorating tips for her Zombie Lounge.

This guy would rather be drinking micro brews while listening to Gaslight Anthem.

The balcony from which Andrea contemplated swan-diving last year.

The game room!

This one girl in our group (pictured above) reminded me so much of Andrea because she had the face of a person contemplating suicide. Her male companion was equally solemn, but later I heard them ambivalently mumble to each other about how the Bayernhof was cool, so that was when I realized they were actually just hipsters.

Dick didn’t seem nearly as enamored with the Andrea Knockoff. In fact, he didn’t even force her to take a fortune from the fortune teller machine like he did to Andrea last year.

Speaking of Andrea, in the French-decorated guest room, I pulled the framed picture of her out of my purse and contemplated leaving it on the dresser I was standing next to, but then I made eye contact with Depressed Teenager. Before I had a chance to slip it back into my purse, Dick turned off the phonograph that was holding everyone enrapt, sending everyone’s attention back toward the door, and I was forced to carry the picture with me into the master bedroom.

I noticed a security camera in the corner of the ceiling, pointed right at me, so I was too afraid to put the picture back in my purse for fear of it looking like I was stealing, but carrying it around in my hand looked just as suspicious, if you ask me. I really wanted to leave it on the bedside table, next to the photo of Chuck and his buxom German fraulein, and so I planned it that I would be the last to the leave the room when Dick led everyone into the master kitchen/bar.

However, Shelly the Muscle slinked over to the doorway of the master bedroom and leaned up against it, Roadhouse-style. I was convinced that she had made me her mark, so now I was starting to perspire slightly on top of darting my eyes around in a paranoid fit.

I filled Kristy in on my plan right before we climbed the steep staircase to the Bayernhof observatory. (Corey mentioned later that he felt like he was in a game of Clue and I just can’t imagine why.)

Shelly followed us up to the observatory too, I guess to make sure no one tried to steal the $20,000 (and probably 20,000 lb) telescope. I actually wasn’t aware that she came up there with us until she apparated from nowhere to Vanna Whitely gesticulate at something Dick was going on about.

Her mere presence was making me fidget with the picture frame until I eventually snapped off the flap on the back. I tried to whine to Kristy about it, but it was at the exact moment we were walking past the 87th bar inside the house, so unless I was saying, “Do you want that on the rocks?” I don’t think she was listening.

In the master bathroom, Shoulder-Baring Know-It-All made some kind of racy comment about having a party in the bath tub, and according to Corey, a brief sign of life flashed across Surly Hipster Girl’s face in response. Of course, I missed all of that because I was too busy silently melting down over where to place Andrea’s picture, and HOW.

Meanwhile, Corey got the giggles and I was trying to stave off my innate desire to gang-laugh with him.

After Dick gave us enough visuals of Chuck’s bathtime routine to produce a Kubrick-helmed cinematic saga  in our heads, he pulled on a long floor mirror which opened to reveal the first of several secret passages, which is of course my favorite part of the house and momentarily distracted me from my photo-placing panic.

Chuck’s Nixon-centric office. I don’t remember this lady in the photo, which means she must not have been annoying.

Shelly didn’t follow us down the secret staircase into the office! I thought I heard Dick mumble something about her having to go and pick up her husband, so I became extremely hopeful and even unclenched a little.

I was the lucky one who got to descend the secret staircase from the office into the boardroom right behind Dick’s ass. We entered the room and Dick found that one of the closet doors was open.

“Chuck must have been in here again,” Dick said with a laugh.

Oh shit, I wanted to murder him with ghost questions, but everyone else had filed into the room by then, and god forbid anyone interrupt Dick’s meticulously memorized spiel.

I have no idea what everyone is looking at because obviously I was too busy taking pictures. I do love how everyone has their arms folded accordingly.

After learning about how the boardroom was essentially one collosal waste of money and space considering Chuck didn’t even have a board, we exited through another secret doorway, into the basement bar.

Attached to the basement bar room is a small canning room, full of industrial cooking equipment which Chuch only used once — to make sauerkraut. Dick let everyone pile into the room while he stood near the doorway, rambling on about the specs of the room, yet conveniently leaving out the part about how it was used to butcher people.

With Shelly nowhere in sight, and me being the last one to exit the canning murder den, I figured this might be my best chance to dump Andrea’s likeness. I quickly conferred with Kristy and Corey who agreed that I should just drop it like it’s hot.

So I did, but not without first clanking it against that glass straw holder and fumbling to make it stand without the aid of the little flap I broke off earlier.

When I emerged from the claustrophic canning room, I saw that Shelly had returned. I’m sure that if she or Dick had asked me a question at that moment, the word “Guilty” would have blurted out of me like the “cuckoo” from a clock.

Shelly squeezed past me and headed straight for the canning room. I held my breath, expecting her to come marching out with Andrea’s portrait, shaking her fist in my face, getting Dick so riled up that his suspenders break. When I imagine Dick losing his temper, and I immediately think of the Caterpillar from Alice In Wonderland.

Turns out Shelly didn’t even go inside the canning room; she was just closing the door.

Total adrenaline rush for the rest of the  tour. (Yes, there’s one more part. Sorry!)